Kings Pinnacle (5 page)

It was now late 1772, and
colonization of America was in full swing, with ships leaving
Ulster for ports in America, such as New York, Boston,
Philadelphia, and Charleston, on a weekly basis. The weather was
cold and it looked like it could take a turn for the worse at any
time.

“
Are you two going with
me?”

“Nae lad,” said Robert. “We
don’t have enough money to pay for our passage, so Hugh and I are
going back home.”

“I would rather go with you
two and take my chances in Scotland.”

“Alex, you’re eighteen years
old now; you can look out for yourself. If you went back with us,
you wouldn’t last a month before the British had you.”

“
What will I do in
America?”

“You’ll have to figure that
out when you get there, lad.”

Angus MacDonald’s cattle
station was conveniently located just southwest of Donaghadee where
both the ocean-going ferry boats and the cattle ferry landed. The
three brothers saddled up their horses for the ride west from the
cattle station, then through Belfast across the marshy ford where
the Lagan River meets the Farset River. The last leg of the trip
was north from Belfast along the coast road to Larne, where Alex
would board the ship to America. It was about a thirty mile ride
from the cattle station to Larne, so it took the brothers most of
the day for the journey, including a tavern stop in Belfast. As
soon as they arrived in Larne, they went to the docks to find the
berth of the Ocean Monarch.

The trip to America would
take at least five or six weeks or up to fourteen weeks if the
winds were adverse. After surviving the sinking of the cattle
ferry, Alex was not looking forward to another ocean
voyage.

* * * *

Samuel

“
Alex, lad, have ye been
practicing yer swimming?” asked Hugh with a grin.

The three brothers were
seated at a table in a small tavern located on the waterfront in
Larne. They were waiting for the outgoing tide and the sailing
orders for the Ocean Monarch. Each brother had a pewter tankard of
ale in front of him. Hugh and Robert were talking with Alex and
giving him some final advice for his trip to America.

Robert frowned at Hugh and
said, “Alex, we didn’t have enough money for a cot for you on the
Ocean Monarch. We could just barely afford a hammock for you on
board the ship.”

“It was nae my fault! I gave
ye all the money I had,” said the indignant Hugh.

The Ocean Monarch was a
retired British navy brigantine that had been converted for
passenger service. The twelve-pound guns had been removed, and the
gun decks had been enclosed from the weather and modified for
passenger service. The brigantine had two masts that were both
square-rigged. Brigantine ships were a favorite of navies and of
merchant fleets around the world, but they were especially favored
by brigands and pirates. Hence, they were called brigantines or
brigs for short. The sleeping spaces between decks consisted of
rows of cots that had been lined up side-by-side to maximize the
use of the space. One section of a passenger deck was filled with
hammocks, and the head room on this deck was so low that you had to
walk in a stooped over position to reach your assigned hammock. It
was this section of the passenger deck where Alex was assigned his
sleeping hammock.

The Ocean Monarch provided
passage to America for families, with men, women, and children
crammed into every available space on the ship. There were also
several young single men traveling to America. All of the young
single men, including Alex, would be assigned sleeping
accommodations based on how much they could pay and as far from the
families traveling together as possible. There would be almost no
privacy during the voyage. There were no dining facilities on the
ship; all meals were eaten at one’s assigned sleeping place or up
on the main deck. After the first two weeks, the food would be
moldy and spoiled. Disease on passenger ships was very common.
Medical facilities were nonexistent and often people died during
the crossing to America. Dead bodies were buried at sea, since
there was no way to preserve them on the ship for later burial. The
toilet facilities consisted of a pair of open-air heads at the bow
of the ship.

There was a chance that Alex
would not arrive in America at all. The dangers of disease, storms,
fires, and pirates were always present during an ocean
voyage.

“Alex, when you get to
America, try to find some other Scots from the lowlands. Maybe you
can find someone you know who can help you get started,” said
Robert.

“Aye, I will do it,” replied
Alex.

“They don’t need no more
Scots in America,” said a man sitting at a table with two other men
near the three brothers, having obviously overhead their
conversation.

The man stood up and walked
up to the three brother’s table. He was a large man dressed in
fashionable British clothes, and he was sneering at
them.

“Weel, pardon me, lad, but
what business is it of yers?” asked Hugh.

“I’m making it my business,”
said the large man.

When he heard the man’s
response and the surly tone of his voice, Hugh pushed his chair
back and stood up. As he rose, he grasped the edge of the table and
lifted it up, turning it over toward the man. The tankards of ale
sitting on the table all fell towards the man, who stepped
backwards, looking down, to avoid having his fine clothes drenched
with ale.

Simultaneously, Hugh leaped
over the table and planted his huge right fist directly into the
man’s jaw just as he looked up. The man’s eyes rolled back into his
head and he fell to the floor, looking like a large tree that had
just been sawn down. Just as the man hit the floor, Alex picked up
his chair and hurled it at the other two men still sitting at their
table. The men ducked the chair, but the thrown chair kept them
seated and out of the fight.

Hugh stepped over the
unconscious man and walked over to the table where the man’s
companions still sat and asked, “Anyone else here don’t like
Scots?”

The two men seated at the
table looked at each other and then back at Hugh. After observing
how large Hugh was and how easily he had felled their friend, they
shook their heads vigorously. Hugh turned around, stepped back over
the large man, who was still unconscious, and picked up the
overturned table to set it back up. He ordered three more tankards
of ale from the serving wench that had walked up after the
altercation was over.

Hugh sat down, looked at
Alex and Robert and said, “Weel, now where were we?”

The two men sitting at the
table got up and walked over to their unconscious friend to rouse
him.

“Wake up, Samuel,” said one
of the men, as he slapped the big man on the cheek.

The man named Samuel did not
wake up, so his friends bent down and grasped him under each of his
arms. They lifted his upper body and dragged him out of the tavern
with his boots dragging across the floor. Dragging him down the
street, they found a horse trough where they intended to splash
some water on his face to wake him up.

Robert turned to Alex and
said, “Hugh and I will take care of Hack for you. You can’t take
him with you.”

“Thanks,” was all Alex could
say, as he realized how much he would miss his brothers and Hack in
America.

* * * *

Alex

“
Fareweel, Alex,” yelled
Hugh, waving at the departing young man standing at the rail of the
ship.

The Ocean Monarch was
sailing out of the Larne harbor on its way to Philadelphia. Alex
waved back to indicate he had heard, but the lump in his throat
would not allow him to shout anything back in answer to Hugh.
Robert nodded and waved.

Alex was so distressed and
sad at leaving his brothers that as soon as the land was out of
sight, he climbed down the ladder to the deck where his hammock was
hanging on a hook. He unfastened one end and attached it to the
companion hook across the deck so that he could lie down in it. The
combination of the long ride, sadness, and the tankards of ale
caused him to drop into a deep sleep almost immediately. The gentle
rolling of the ship put Alex into an even deeper sleep as the ship
sailed along the northern Irish coast making its way toward the
North Atlantic and west to America.

A sharp pain in his back
suddenly woke Alex from his slumber. He opened his eyes to find the
large man named Samuel, from the Larne tavern brawl, standing over
his hammock looking down at him. Samuel had just kicked Alex in the
back and that blow had jolted him out of sleep. Alex rolled out of
the hammock to the side away from the large man and dropped into a
fighter’s crouch with one hand reaching down for his boot
knife.

“There won’t be no Scots
sleeping in this section while Samuel Ruskin is alive,” said the
big man.

“I guess you’ll have to
leave this section then,” replied Alex with a grin as he raked his
long blond hair out of his eyes with his left hand.

“You’re the one that’s
leaving, Scot, since you don’t have your friends here to protect
you.”

“And who’s planning on
making me leave?”

“Me and me mates,” replied
Samuel as he gestured toward the other two men, the same ones that
had been sitting at the table with him in the tavern.

The two men who were
standing next to Samuel stepped away from him to give him more
room, and one of them slipped around behind Alex.

“Three Brits to one Scot; I
like those odds,” said Alex as he reached his hand down closer to
his boot knife.

But before he could grasp
the knife in his boot sheath, Samuel’s friend grabbed Alex from
behind around his chest, pinning his arms to his sides. The man
then pulled Alex backwards and up as far as he could. The deck
above them was so low that the clearance wouldn’t allow the man to
lift Alex up very much. Samuel and his other friend were on the
other side of Alex’s stretched out hammock, so they were going to
have to walk around it to get to Alex. Alex saw that the situation
would get bad for him quickly. He knew that he must find a way to
get free of the man who was holding him pinned to his
chest.

Alex first nodded his head
down and then brought it back up quickly while arching his back at
the same time. This contortion caused the back of Alex’s head to
strike the nose of the man holding him. The force of the blow both
jammed the man’s head into the deck above and broke his nose, which
immediately started gushing blood. It also caused him to let go of
Alex so that he could put both of his hands over his broken nose to
stop the bleeding. As Alex dropped out the man’s grasp, he reached
down and drew his knife from the sheath built into his boot and
reassumed a fighter’s crouch. Only this time, he was holding a
knife. The man with the broken nose was out of the action; he was
sitting on the deck, holding his nose and moaning from the pain.
The odds had been reduced from three to one down to two to one,
plus Alex now had a knife in his hand.

“What in the devil is going
on here?” shouted one of the ship’s seamen as he ran along the deck
to where the altercation was taking place.

“There’s no difficulty,”
said Samuel Ruskin. “My friend here accidently slipped and fell
down. I’m afraid that he may have broken his nose. This kindly
young Scots lad got his knife out to cut some rags for him, to help
stop the bleeding.”

“Well that’s not what it
looked like to me, and if the captain hears about it, you four will
be traveling to America in the hold. There’s a brig down there just
made for the likes of you.”

“There’s no need to tell the
captain about a minor accident on the passenger deck. We’ll get
this blood cleaned up and everything back in order in no time at
all.”

The seaman relaxed a bit and
seemed to be buying the story. “You might want to have the cook
take a look at this fellow’s nose. He doubles as the ship’s doctor
and might be able to set it back in place for him.”

“We’ll do that and don’t
bother about it anymore,” said Samuel patting the seaman on the
back as the young tar turned around and walked off.

As soon as the seaman was
out of hearing range, Samuel turned to Alex and said, “This ain’t
finished yet, laddie.” Alex just shrugged his shoulders as if it
didn’t matter to him. Samuel bent down to help his friend get up,
and they walked off to another part of the deck. Alex knew he had
dodged a musket ball and that it wasn’t, in fact, over. He didn’t
have Hugh and Robert to back him up, so he would have to think of a
way to take care of the situation himself. He lay back down and
stretched out in his hammock to think about it; he was soon asleep
again as if nothing had happened. Alex slept the rest of the day
and all night without stirring.

The next day, it seemed as
if an uneasy truce had been called between Alex and his foes and
the men didn’t start any more trouble. The crowding of the ship
caused by well over a hundred passengers bound for America
prevented any more confrontations, since little privacy existed on
the ship. There were always people or sailors nearby.